The surfaces of the components and parts will be damaged after the mechanical equipment has been running for some time. Such damages may be wear and tear in the material or surface cracks on the components or parts. To assure a reliable operation of the mechanical equipment, it is necessary to deal with these damages in a timely manner by, for example, replacing the damaged parts with new ones. In the case of combustion gas turbines, one of the most frequent maintenance jobs is to use new ceramic insulating tiles to replace old ones that have cracks and/or wear and tear in the material. Usually, this job needs to shut down the gas turbine first before the ceramic insulating tiles are checked one by one visually by a specially trained engineer to assess which tiles need to be replaced based on the location and length of cracks or the amount of material loss.
The existing approach stated in the above has the following disadvantages: first, the inspections can only be performed manually by a specialist; second, the specialist's visual inspections are time-consuming and arduous, and occasionally human errors can happen, which will affect the reliable operation of the gas turbine.